Sundance/Slamdance
Film Festival has Local ConnectioNby Tammy Brackett

Ft. Lauderdale guitarist Steve Price has
leading role in new documentary “I Am Thor”

Guitarist
Steve Price is packing his bags to board a plane to
attend the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah to view “I
Am Thor”, a documentary about playing guitar with
the hammer-wielding rock warrior Thor, a body builder
turned glam rock metal god popular in the early 1980s.
The independent film documents Thor's precarious early
career and the past thirteen years of his attempted
comeback and is interwoven with footage from the band's
early tour days. Price has played with the band on and
off for thirty three years. The documentary stars Jon
Mikl Thor, Steve Price, Mike Favata,

Slamdance runs concurrently with the prestigious Sundance
Film Festival held yearly in the snowy enclave of Park
City, Utah, and Price is excited at the pre-release
buzz “I Am Thor” is garnering. “Slug
Magazine, Variety, and AM FM Magazine have all written
really positive reviews,” he says via phone from
his home in Ft. Lauderdale. “It's an Official
Selection of Slamdance, and that in itself is great.”

Director/Co-Producer and Cinematographer
Ryan Wise (Sam Has 7 Friends, The Green Rush, Why We
Ride) stumbled on the mighty Thor, known in the mortal
world as John Mikl Thor, in Seattle. He and producer
Alan Higbee caught his set at a dive bar where he was
performing. “He was running around, changing costumes,
bending steel bars with his teeth,” remembers
Wise. “I looked at Alan and said, 'We have to
film this'”.

“The past few years of this documentary
and comeback tour have been a whirlwind,” says
Price, who rejoined the band officially in 2005. “The
comeback started in 1999 when Thor played The FBI Club
in Orlando as a reunion. In 2005, I rejoined Thor and
the band got a record deal with Cleopatra Records. We
were booked on a sixty city tour and I did twenty of
those shows. In 2009, we played the Sauna Open Air Festival
in Finland with Johnny Winter, ZZ Top and Motley Crue.
And of course, Ryan has been filming the whole thing
since 2001.”

Price waxes nostalgic about Thor and his part in the
band. “Being in a theatrical band, means people
are going to gravitate toward the show and the front
person but maybe not the music. I was this guy in the
background and people were not really paying attention
to what I was doing because I wasn't bending steel and
smashing bricks on my chest. I was playing guitar, writing
and arranging songs.”

the sheer will and tenacity of Thor.

Famous people are making a big to-do over
the movie, including Nick Turner from Hawkwind, Mark Weise
(Ozzie Osbourne's photographer) and John Holsturm from Punk
Magazine.

What's Price's personal hope for “I
Am Thor? “From my perspective, the hope would be, after
thirty plus years of work and ten years of a come back that
audiences will see the story of this guy and admire the sheer
will and tenacity of Thor. The hope is all the guys would
get back together again and do a major tour,” says Price.“We
have 100,000 fans world wide. There's a petition on Facebook
to get Thor to play in Dublin. The movie hopefully will be
a boost to our career.”

“The most important thing is getting satisfaction from
all the years of effort.,” says Price.“The songs
are great, the musicians are great. I want to go out with
a bang. It's time to go out on fire.”